#19 Blancetts and Colorado

It is wonderful to me that Carrie just moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado; that is where our Grandfather, John Andrew Koontz married his second wife, Emaline Kitchen. This area is a prominent place in our family history with the Blancett and Koontz family. I am looking forward to staying with Carrie and along with her mom investigate the area and see what we can find. Maybe we will solve the mystery of what happened to Mary Stamm, Grandpa John's first wife, our grandmother.

Here is some information about this area from our relative, Truman Blancett:

In 1857, word reached the east that gold and had been discovered at the head of Cherry Creek, forty miles south of where Denver now stands. In 1858, there was quite a movement west, but the only sign of a road leading west was a couple of wagon ruts with weeds growing between. They would get as far as the Blue River which is on the edge of the desert, 150 miles west of Fort Leavenworth, then go into camp and wait for some one to return who had ventured further out on the desert. When they returned bringing discouraging reports, "No wood, no water, no grass for the stock", they would turn back. There was a large cottonwood tree standing in the camp ground, and they would hitch up their wagons, and circle around that tree back to the road headed east. That tree was known for some years as the "Turning Post".

In 1858 but very few that made the start reached Colorado, but in '59 and '60 the rush was on again. About one-half of the '59 rush turned back, while the other half made it thru.

Weren't these pioneer women carrying their end of the burden of changing a wilderness? I could write whole pages of heroic deeds preformed by these women.

When the Sand Creek Battle was fought with the Indians, my sister Mrs. Vanendert, whose husband was an officer in Colorado, followed the command and set up a hospital tent within a mile of the battle. She also cooked breakfast for Col. Chivington and officers.

A little history of that beautiful country lying between Colorado Springs and Denver, as there are but few left who know of the great tortures and sufferings of those pioneer women and children in that locality:

It was an inviting place for the home-seeker and in a short time, the lonely cabins could be seen most anywhere. But the Indians soon got wise to this and in 1864 that became the most dangerous locality in Colorado. In a short time the women and children were being murdered or carried away and their few heads of cattle or horses driven off.

There were but few men in that locality, as they were forced to the mountains where they could earn a little money, and left their families exposed to the savages. This became so serious the governor advised the building of a fort so the few men that were there could protect the women and children.

We built a stockade or fort on Cherry Creek, forty miles south of  Denver. All the women and children of Douglas County found refuge there, something like one hundred in all were held there from the middle of July until middle of August. My mother and two sisters were there part of the time, Everyone was on half rations. It was the duty of my brother and me and a few others to ride the front of that locality and give warning of the approach of the Indians.

It was not uncommon for us to find the remains of women and children, and some men who had been slain before they could reach the fort. I myself can point to the places of thirty-two of these victims of the tomahawk. Decent burial was impossible. We simply dug a shallow hole beside them, rolled them in, and covered them over, leaving no sign of a tragedy.

"The Covered Wagon" was shown on the screen of Canon City, and as I gazed on those scenes, it brought to me the saddest memories of what I saw that has never been recorded in history, but forgotten in a day in the wild rush of emigrants getting away from the desert to escape the vengeance of the savages. No, the entire history of the "covered wagon" can never be told; not the misery and mental agony of those pioneer women riding for days and weeks in those covered wagons, winding their tortuous way across the heated sands of desert with their little children hovering around them with fear and despair showing in their faces. At any time they might peer out, with nothing to meet their gaze but the wild, windswept plains that lay stretched before them for hundred of miles. They could also see the lurking savage on either side with spear and tomahawk, watching his chance to rush down on that covered wagon, to murder the little ones and carry away the mother into captivity. This was done many times to my knowledge. Weren't these mothers paying a costly price for their part in the building up of the great West?"

It is interesting to me to read about our family as they helped to build the West and eventually, befriend the Indian people;and that we have become a great nation out of such struggles. We have a lot to be grateful for. Patty